Partners in Crime (TV story)
Partners in Crime 'is the first episode of the fourth series of ''Doctor Who. It was written by Russell T. Davies, directed by James Strong and featured David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor and Catherine Tate as Donna Noble. Overview To be added Synopsis Completely without knowing it, the Doctor and Donna infiltrate Adipose Industries in order to figure out the secret behind their new dieting pill which seems to have ludicrous effect record. Separately, they discover that the pills are part of an alien breeding plan, the head figure of the industries seeding the population to make way for a new generation of a race made of fat. Reunited, the Doctor and Donna work to prevent millions of people for becoming breeding grounds... Plot Donna Noble makes her way to her job at Adipose Industries and attends a video presentation of the new weight-loss pill being offered by it's manager, Miss Foster. At the same time, the Doctor sneaks into the building himself, presenting to work there and watches the same presentation from the projection room. They separately make inquiries to other works in the office asking after lists of their customers, neither of them aware of the other's presence. That evening, Donna goes and visits one of the customers on the list, Stacey Campbell and asks her about the effects of the Adipose pill. Elsewhere, the Doctor goes to another customer, Roger Davey, and does the same thing; while talking about the benefits of the pill, Davey also mentions being woken up every single night by the burglar alarm since he started taking the pills but the no signs of the culprit. At Stacey's house, she goes upstairs to prepare herself in the bathroom while Donna, still sat in the living room, starts fiddling with a golden pill-shaped pendant she'd been given. Locked in the bathroom, Stacey starts to feel strange effects around her body when a large lump of fat starts pulling itself out of her stomach and breaks off her body into a small, innocent-looking creature. As this happens, Foster detects the occurrence in her office and orders a squad to collect the creature while she uses another pill to proceed with the effect. As the Doctor leaves Davey's house, he detects the alien presence with a small device and runs off to intercept it. Tracey is still locked in her bathroom as more and more creatures start forming from her fat. Donna hears her cries of terror from outside and tries to break her way in. She lets out one last scream when her entire body breaks apart into a mass of creatures scrabbling about on the floor. Donna bursts into the bathroom to find no sign of Stacey but catches a glimpse of one of the creatures jumping out of the window to the ground. As the men collecting the creatures drive off with them, the Doctor detects their presence in the van and runs after it but fails to catch it. Donna tries to chase the creatures herself, but loses track of them in the dark; she and the Doctor wind up stopping close to each other but walk off in opposite directions. Donna returns home to receive a lecture from her mother Sylvia and then heads off to find her grandad Wilf atop a hill with his telescope. He tells her that she doesn't seem to be herself as of late and she, in turn, insists that if he ever spots a blue box flying overhead, he call out for her as she's been looking for the Doctor everywhere. In the TARDIS, the Doctor does a diagnostic of a capsule only to look up and remember that Martha isn't with him anymore and he's just talking to himself. The following day, she and the Doctor once again return to Adipose Industries separately. The day passes and Donna hides in the ladies while everybody leaves. Suddenly, Miss Foster comes in with two armed guards, calling out for the person hiding in there. She has the guards start kicking in the stalls and find reporter Penny Carter hiding in one before Donna's. She furiously accuses Foster of faking her company's statistics and demands to know the truth. After they leave, Donna follows them. Meanwhile, the Doctor makes his way to the roof and drops himself down to the right floor in a window-cleaner's cradle, listening to Foster's exchange with his stethoscope. While Donna listens in through the door, Foster ties Carter up and shows her one of the creatures, an Adipose, as the real effect of the pills. As Donna and the Doctor watch the exchange through the windows, they inadvertently spot each other. Using sign language, Donna explains that she's been looking for him and that she came to Adipose Industries hoping to find him. They suddenly notice that Foster is staring at the pair's exchange; Donna runs and the Doctor calls the cradle back to the roof while the guards take off in pursuit. The Doctor and Donna reunite in the stairwell and head back up to the roof. Donna explains that she'd been looking around at various internet conspiracies hoping that the Doctor would be connected to one of them. He locks the cradle's controls with his sonic screwdriver and takes them down in it so as to avoid capture. However, Foster arrives on the roof in possession of her own sonic device, a sonic pen, and uses it to fuse the controls and sever one of the cradle's cables, causing Donna to fall from it, handing on by the bracket of the broken cable. Before Foster breaks the other cable, the Doctor fuses her sonic pen with his screwdriver and she drops it. He catches it as it falls and uses it to break back into the building, run down to the lower floor and pull Donna to safety. Foster and her guards head downstairs and intercept them; she gives her real name as Matron Cofelia, a nurse of an intergalactic class nursery fleet hired by the Adiposian First Family to seed a new generation following the apparent loss of their own breeding planet. Since seeding a level 5 planet like Earth is an intergalactic felony, the Doctor promises to stop her; before she has her guards open fire on them, he disables Cofelia and the guards by setting her sonic pen against his screwdriver and causing a high-pitch soundwave while he and Donna flee to the basement. Revealing a machine called the Inducer wired through the building hidden behind a panel in the cupboard he'd been working, the Doctor hacks into it with one of Cofelia's golden capsules and her sonic pen. While he works, he and Donna catch up; he tells Donna about Martha and she tells him that, despite her wanting to travel after their last encounter, she never got around to it. From this, she asks if she could take up his previous offer to go with him when Foster is stopped. Suddenly, the machine starts up; upstairs, Cofelia activates the Inducer prematurely, causing all the people that had already taken the Adipose capsules, including Sylvia's friend Suzette, to start sprouting Adipose all over their bodies, a process which would accelerate and end up killing them all. The Doctor tries desperately to override it but Cofelia just increases the machine's power, rendering his efforts useless without a second capsule. To his absolute delight, though, Donna pulls out her own golden capsule and he hardwires it into the machine, shutting it down. The process abruptly stops and the people are saved. In the basement, the machine suddenly comes back online and provides the Adiposian First Family's instructions, revealing that they knew to breed on Earth was a crime and thus makes Cofelia expendable. The Doctor and Donna rush to the roof where a giant spaceship hovers over the city, collecting all the spawned Adipose with tractor beams. They see Cofelia going up in a beam as well and inform her of the message. She believes that she is still needed as a nanny for the children, but the Doctor reminds her that the parents have the kids, so the nanny isn't needed. The tractor beam suddenly shuts off and Cofelia falls to her death. Later, the police surround the scene, the Doctor disposes of Cofelia's sonic pen and Carter, still tied to a chair, promises to report their involvement. Going back to the TARDIS, Donna drags masses of luggage from her car, parked nearby. The Doctor, however, insists that following the trouble that developed from Martha's feelings for him, he just wants to travel with a friend. With that established, Donna goes to deal with her Sylvia's car keys while the Doctor lugs her possessions inside; she sticks the keys in a bin and asks a nearby blonde woman to tell Sylvia what bin she left them in when she comes along asking. As she runs off, however, the woman turns to reveal herself to be Rose Tyler. As she walks away from the scene, she disappears while Donna runs back to the TARDIS to find the Doctor waiting for her there. For her first request, she asks the Doctor to take the TARDIS over Wilf's hill wherein he looks through his telescope to see her waving goodbye. Wilf is thrilled and excited to see Donna in the TARDIS and prances around happily while it flies off into space. Cast * The Doctor - David Tennant * Donna Noble - Catherine Tate * Rose Tyler - Billie Piper * Miss Foster - Sarah Lancashire * Wilfred Mott - Bernard Cribbins * Sylvia Noble - Jacqueline King * Penny Carter - Verona Joseph * Stacey Harris - Jessica Gunning * Roger Davey - Martin Ball * Craig Staniland - Rachid Sabitri * Clare Pope - Chandra Ruegg * Suzette Chambers - Sue Kelvin * Taxi Driver - Jonathan Stratt Crew To be added References To be added Story Notes To be added Continuity To be added Home video and audio releases To be added External Links * Official ''Partners in Crime'' page on '''Doctor Who Website